There are times, as a football fan, that you just have to sit back and ‘go with the flow'. Apply every age-old adage you can find to make yourself feel better: "bad decisions average out over the season"; "we'll come good next week"; "tough luck, the referee should have seen that!" Grin and bear the times that things don't fall your team's way because, you know, sooner or later things are going to change, and rainbows will replace those dark storm clouds. Goals will flow like North Queensland flood waters rather than every shot hitting a sandbag. Lady Luck will flash her pearly whites at you once more.
I'm sitting here writing this blog on a wet Townsville day, and the weather bureau is tipping a big wet season for us up here this year. As a Fury fan it feels as though the wet season has been in full force since about August, when the club's future was again thrown under the microscope just as optimism started to return. We have (or had?) great reasons to be optimistic - the FFA rode in and saved the club from the financial abyss. From nothing we assembled an exciting young team, masterminded by the charismatic and fashion-conscious Franz Straka. Townsville was confirmed as a host city for the World Cup. Times were relatively good.
Everyone reading this blog knows what issues we're facing (if you don't, please indulge this shameless self-promotion). For the most part Australian football fans are sympathetic; forums are filled with well-wishes and positive vibes. Community and corporate support is pretty good, despite ‘poor attendances' in our past couple of games. The team is even doing their part on the pitch, for the most part, playing exciting football - we're the top scoring team on the road and, with our defensive problems, opponents are always guaranteed the odd opportunity to score themselves.
Unfortunately, our one missing ingredient this season is luck. If I were so inclined, I could go through virtually every game this season and pick out the points we've lucked out on. Yes, every team can do this, but do all of the decisions help kick your club while it's done? Does it result in you lying in second-last, despite playing some of the more enterprising football of the year (kudos, at this point, to Brisbane and Adelaide for tearing it up this year)?
Gold Coast: We didn't deserve to win this one, and I'm not going to sit here and pick out refereeing errors (although we all know who refereed it). What I will point out here is that, in front of a bumper crowd on a Sunday afternoon, the team put in its flattest performance of the season. Perhaps we were due one. Perhaps things might have been if Newcastle Jets game had gone ahead we'd have been flat there instead, away from the curious eyes of thousands of potential ironclad Fury fans at home. We had Franz and Stu off the bench - as luck would have it, the ban would have ended in Newcastle. Unlucky, but we move on.
Central Coast: It seems the flat performance hurt crowds - or did it? Perhaps a Friday night fixture, in a town where Saturday afternoon/evening fixtures are essential, didn't help. Unlucky. Anyway, the boys turned up much better to this match and, for good parts of the match, were the better team. Unfortunately we go 1-0 down before battling our way into the game. Then David Williams bursts on to a fantastic Isaka Cernak pass and is scythed down by the goalkeeper. Surely a penalty! Apparently not; the only chap in the stadium who doesn't think it's a dot-shot is the guy holding the whistle. No penalty, and we go home with a loss. Unlucky.
Melbourne Heart: The geniuses of the FFA scheduling department decided an 8pm Wednesday kick-off was the right way to proceed with this one - unlucky, but we're going to get these games sometimes. Finally though the boys dominate on the pitch and could have been out of sight in the first half and early in the second. Unfortunately, from a winning position we go 3-1 down and no less than two of the goals were controversial. The lead up to the first goal involved Michael Beauchamp climbing all over Chris Payne to win a header, helping to set up the ‘offside' call that has most fans opening up their law books and scratching their noggins. Whatever the legality of the goal, it was lineball - sometimes the AR sticks his flag up. Other nights the referee spots the defender using the attacker as some sort of flexible jungle gym and blows his whistle. On Wednesday night, neither happened. Unlucky. Moments later, dazed by the goal, we conceded a second that was 100% a handball by Gerald Sibon. I'm a referee and a fan of the game and in any situation where the ball hits the hand of the attacker who is challenging for the ball, with his arms splayed out to widen his appearance, you should blow your whistle. The referee, in a perfect position to spot it, did not. Unlucky. Then of course you throw in the missed Williams, Daal and Spagnuolo chances which on any other night might have rippled the night - again, unlucky.
So, where can we go from here? Apparently nobody knows if we'll be around next season or not. Lyall Gorman came out this week and said the FFA aren't in the business of owning clubs; that's fine, but they've owned us for six months, and the entire time have held an axe dangling above our head. They also owned Adelaide for 18 months without so much as a murmur of the club getting shut down. Our club, our players, our region, and our fans deserve so much better than what we're getting from our benevolent owners at the moment.
Ultimately, I think most Fury fans would accept all the worst luck in the world on the pitch if it meant that we got some luck off it and received the backing we need to stay in the A-League not just next season, but well beyond. The FFA gains nothing by chopping us; we've brought a lot to the league with our style of play and never-say-die attitude. And that's not just dumb luck.
